


Wortel

by SebAuRouge



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Bad Parenting, Childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 05:39:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5194268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SebAuRouge/pseuds/SebAuRouge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We are not our parents, we do not have to carry the burden of their choices or the weight of their sins"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wortel

**Author's Note:**

> Wortel = 'Carrot' in Dutch (I think)
> 
> I'm not claiming any of this is real. It's all a magical elaboration of rumours and half-truths. Apart from Jos Verstappen being arrested for attempted murder, and Max's parents splitting up, that's true.
> 
> I've never written anything before and it's unbetaed so it might suck.

Max is four when he was given the soft-toy rabbit, he names it Wortel and his fat baby fingers cling to it wherever he goes. His mother has a picture of him and his newborn baby sister asleep on their parents’ bed with Wortel in-between them. Max decides Wortel is the best racing rabbit in the world. He paints empty cardboard boxes with imaginary liveries and holds races around the legs of the dining room table, Wortel always gets to stand on the top step of the podium.

When he’s five Wortel gets covered in jam and Max becomes hysterical when the freshly washed toy is pinned to the clothes line to dry by it’s ears, his father scolds him for crying and tells him how babyish it is to get upset over a toy. The year Max starts primary school he notices the growing disapproving looks and dismissal from his father when he sees him with the rabbit.

One afternoon Max finds his father reading the paper in the kitchen. He shuffles up to dustbin, opens the heavy lid and drops Wortel inside knowing his father is watching with curiosity.

“I don’t need it. I’m not a baby anymore,”

Max tells his father puffing his little chest up.

Jos is silent for a moment then beckons Max over and lifts him into his lap to sit and read the paper with him. Max feels very grown up and smiles as snuggles into father’s chest.

That night when his family is sleeping Max tiptoes downstairs, quietly takes Wortel out of the bin and smuggles the rabbit back into his room.

Max asks for a kart soon after and throws a tantrum when his mother says no. His father buys him one the next day and Max pretends he doesn’t hear them arguing as he drives it round their little garden.

 

Max is nine when his parents spilt up, his sister is six and cries when their mother tells them, her little world falling apart. Max blinks as he watches his mother comfort his sobbing sister.

“Who will me and Vicky live with?” he asks.

“Me, of course” his mother says firmly.

“Where will Daddy live? Will he still take me karting? I have a race next weekend,” says Max worrying his bottom lip with his teeth.

“That’s not the most important thing right now, Max” his mother snaps, trying to quieten Victoria’s wails.

“Then I don’t want to live with you. I want to live with Dad,” Max huffs and storms up to his room and slams the door ignoring his mother’s calls.

He angrily flings himself onto his bed and pulls Wortel out from the broken seam of his mattress. Max clutches the rabbit to his chest and pretends he doesn’t notice the fur grow damp.

 

Max is nine and half when he learns what words like ‘child custody’, ‘divorce’ and ‘restraining order’ really mean. He and Victoria spends long hours sat in nicely decorated rooms with toys and comfy chairs whilst softly-spoken people ask them which parent they want to live with. Victoria always says their mother and Max always says their father. The social workers and family lawyers gently try and persuade him otherwise reminding him that ‘he’d miss his mother and sister’ and how he’d have to move to a new area and a new school but Max had made up his mind. He wants to be a Formula 1 driver and this is the way to do it that he knows.

A few weeks later a social worker drops Max and a suitcase of his things off at his father’s house, his father isn’t allowed to be near his old house anymore. Jos is standing in the driveway waiting for them and pulls Max into a bone-crushing hug.

“I missed you, Maxie” he says pressing a kiss into his hair.

“I missed you too,” says Max, hugging his father back.

“Is there space for karts here?”

His father grins widely.

“Not here, but I have a surprise for you.”

Max follows him into the house with his case already thinking about places to hide Wortel.

 

Max enjoys the following years. He sharpens his driving skills on track, races hard and rapidly climbs the karting ranks. His father takes him to watch races where he can bask in the adulation of older drivers, words like ‘talent’ ‘rising star’ and ‘future champion’ are thrown around in front of him. He wanders innocently around the paddock in flashing sneakers and cartoon printed sweatshirts and blushes from all the praise whilst quietly learning the ropes of his future hunting grounds. He smiles for parents, teachers and the occasional journalist, graciously accepts wins and praises losers and everyone tells him what a nice young man he’s becoming.

Years later when Max tells an F1 journalist he wouldn’t be where he is today without his father he really means it.

Jos Verstappen makes up with temper what he lacks in talent but Max knows cautious prodding and pushing can produce excellent results when the rage is channelled in the right direction. The learning process is of trial and error, sometimes backfiring horribly on occasions where Max was left alone with a broken kart, angry tears and the silent treatment but in his own way his father loves him and can’t stay furious for long. Max is patient and can wait. Good fortune flocks to Max like birds flock to breadcrumbs. On occasion the tyres of a fellow karting racer will become mysteriously damaged or the backers of another boy desperate for the same Formula 3 seat will back out for unknown reasons. By thirteen Max knows his father will do anything to keep vivaciously living his dream through him, even letting his reputation stay clean and good at the expense of his own. Max happily let his father do the dirty work and continues to smile for the journalists.

 

Max is fourteen when the police show up at their doorstep to arrest his father. A doughy, cow-eyed police officer gently leads him into their kitchen, shuts the door and pulls the curtains. He guesses it’s to spare him from seeing his father handcuffed and bundled into the backseat of a police car. She smiles as she asks him about school, about his hobbies and Max can tell she’s trying to be kind but it’s a poor distraction and he’s not a small child anymore. He smiles back at her and offers her cup of tea, answers her questions and insists he’s fine to be left alone and ‘of course he’ll call his mother’ to come and collect him as soon as the police leave.

Max never calls his mother.

Two weeks later Jos returns home to find Max eating cereal on the living room floor surrounded by track guides and DVDs of Grand Prix’s that took place before he was born. Max doesn’t pause the video when his father slumps onto the sofa beside him.

“So you are not going to prison?” Max asks, eyes darting from the paper to the TV screen.

“She dropped the charges.”

Max can’t remember the name of whichever girlfriend it was and doesn’t care to check.

“So we are still going to Monza this weekend?” Max presses.

“I don’t know I don’t think it’s a good idea right now, there were a lot of press outside the police station. It’s a lot of unneeded attention,” says Jos.

Max frowns. “But Marko and Tost will be there and it might be the only opportunity to talk to them about a Toro Rosso seat!”

“Max I-“

“I can always ask mum to take me,” says Max sharply.

Jos sighs rubbing his hands over his dark circles and unshaven face. “No, don’t do that. I’ll go pack.”

Max nods his approval and returns to the television.

 

Max is sixteen when he signs for Toro Rosso, or rather his mother and father sign for him as he supervises from the side-lines. Afterwards his sister brightly suggests the whole family go out for a meal to celebrate. Max watches his parents awkwardly stutter over excuses and why that’s not a good idea. He smirks when he sees his sister force her bottom lip to tremble and her expression turns to crestfallen. Jos and Sophie hastily agree to sit in each other’s’ company for two hours over pizza much to Victoria’s delight.

_She’s learning too,_ Max thinks to himself.

 

Max is barely eighteen when he buys his first apartment, it’s practically a bedsit but he doesn’t need the luxury a place in Switzerland would provide for the same tax benefit and price. The price of a small chunk of a Monegasque skyscraper, situated so close to his rivals is worth far more. An innocent eighteen-year-old alone for the first time in a strange city, drivers will come flocking to him like concerned mother hens and he will be the waiting for them like a fox.

It’s the summer break and the rental van sat on the driveway and is filled with cardboard boxes. Clothes, shoes, files of racing data, the odd piece of current team wear is all carefully folded and packed. The old trophies, certificates, photographs and karting memorabilia will all stay in Belgium. Max knows they mean more to his father than they do to him so leaves them behind for Jos to pour over when he’s gone. Perhaps it will be even be enough to delay the inevitable phone call his father will make when he’s conveniently ‘in the area’, pleading to come and visit.

There’s a knock on his bedroom door, it’s his father.

“All ready to go?” asks Jos after a while , pulling at a splinter of wood on the doorframe.

“Just about, yeah.” smiles Max, casually observing his father’s discomfort.

_Empty-nest syndrome? Who’d have thought._

“I’m going to miss you.” says Jos looking up at him with watery eyes.

In all his life Max can’t think of a single time he’s seen his father cry. He eyes his father critically with his grisly skin, greying hair and fat clinging to his stomach and pretends he doesn’t hear a wet sniff.

Max feels his cheek twitch. So weak.

“I will miss you too,” says Max with a tight smile and kindly goes to embrace his father.

When Jos releases him Max goes to pull up a loose floorboard before carefully taking it out Wortel from his hiding spot. The rabbit is greying and threadbare from age and Max places him gently in the final box before taping it shut. He doesn’t look at his father's face as he takes it out to the van.

Max puts the keys in the ignition and pulls out of the driveway. He doesn’t need to look in the wing mirror to know Jos is crying on the doorstep.


End file.
